Category Archives: Photographs: The Southwest

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning

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Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning - A nearby sandstone tower backed by a more distant cliff face in morning light, Zion National Park.
A nearby sandstone tower backed by a more distant cliff face in morning light, Zion National Park.

Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A nearby sandstone tower backed by a more distant cliff face in morning light, Zion National Park.

If you look at the photograph that I posted yesterday, you can probably locate almost the entire composition of this photograph contained within the earlier one. This perhaps illustrates one or more things about how I sometimes think when making photographs. One approach that I think I use quite a bit is to try to isolate small sections within much larger landscapes. If you look at yesterday’s image, you’ll see that it uses a fairly familiar sort of approach, namely to include a fairly large swath of “stuff” from close to far away within the frame. Today’s image, though, eliminates out all of that other stuff that might provide a wider context and instead just “shows” one small, interesting bit of the larger scene. And, obviously, I used a longer lens – something else that I often do when shooting landscape. I’m most certainly not one of those photographers who buys into the notion that “landscape photography is done with wide-angle lenses!” I also like juxtapositions. In this scene there are perhaps quite a few – and you might even see some that I’m unaware of. There are color juxtapositions the bright green at the bottom against the very different tones of the rocks; the brighter reddish rocks in the foreground against the darker and more blue or even purple tones of the more distant rocks; the clarity of the close and sunlit red rocks against the lower contrast and somewhat haze-obstructed character of the distant cliff.

The location is in the Virgin River drainage of Zion Canyon. One person described it as “Yosemite in red,” and now that I have been there I can certainly see why! While the overall scale of this valley is smaller than that of Yosemite, the verticality of the place is just as stunning. In fact, in some ways, because the walls are closer and because of the wild colors, it may be more stunning. (Of course, Yosemite does have those waterfalls… and some crazy dome formations… and the massive scale of features like El Capitan. I digress… ;-) The smaller scale makes some kinds of photography perhaps a bit easier. For example, those “juxtapositions” I mentioned above can be fine tune a bit more readily by moving the camera position a few feet. (I did that here as I moved the camera a bit to get three trees way up on the far cliff to line up to the left of the upper section of the closer formation on the right side of the frame. Ironically, you probably didn’t even see them until I mentioned that… ;-)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Zion Canyon, Virgin River, Spring

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Zion Canyon, Virgin River, Spring - The Virgin River flows through Zion Canyon near Weeping Rock, Zion Canyon National Park, Utah.
The Virgin River flows through Zion Canyon near Weeping Rock, Zion Canyon National Park, Utah.

Zion Canyon, Virgin River, Spring. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Virgin River flows through Zion Canyon near Weeping Rock, Zion Canyon National Park, Utah.

On this morning we were back in Zion Canyon, following the Virgin River up the Valley to various locations. While it was still quite early we had walked up to the base of Weeping Rock, deep in the shaded area in the center of this photograph, and photographed there in the quiet shade. Then we moved a short distance up this part of the canyon where it makes a rather sharp series of turns and stopped an a place where there were visits up, down, and across the Virgin River and along the huge sandstone cliffs in all directions.

Looking around, I saw that there were some scattered clouds that were moving across the sky and alternative shading and lighting various portions of the landscape, and creating some dramatic effects, especially when the light came from behind the group of cottonwood trees along the banks of the river below me. The skeletal forms of the trees’ trunks were still clearly visible and, when the light was bright enough, they cast mirror-image shadows on the new grass below. The tops of the trees were fringed by new leaves, and these glowed brightly in the backlight coming from above the far cliffs above Weeping Rock. There was just enough haze in the air, amplified a bit by backlighting, to suggest the distance and massive size of the dark cliffs.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

White Rim Canyons

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White Rim Canyons - Rugged canyon and plateau landscape of the White Rim area, photographed from Grand View, Canyonlands National Park.
Rugged canyon and plateau landscape of the White Rim area, photographed from Grand View, Canyonlands National Park.

White Rim Canyons. Canyonlands National Park, Utah. April 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rugged canyon and plateau landscape of the White Rim area, photographed from Grand View, Canyonlands National Park.

I made this photograph on a day when we visited the “sky island” section of Canyonlands National Park, a high plateau fronted on many sides by steep cliffs and giant drop-offs. Since this was my first time in Canyonlands, I had a lot of reconnaissance to do before my planned evening shoot. We drove around sections of this part of the park, pausing at many overlooks to enjoy the view and consider the potential evening views. At one point we stopped at an overlook near the southern end of this section of the park to look and photograph.

The area in the photograph is the “white rim” area, where whitish colored rocks form a sort of tough terrace into which creeks have begun to carve canyons. The scale of the formations is tremendous, and the fact that two mighty rivers, the Colorado and the Green meet not too far from this point. This photograph was made well before the “ideal” golden hour time, but the low and slanting side-light and the rugged terrain of canyons and buttes seemed to compensate for that.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Canyon and Forest

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Sandstone Canyon and Forest - A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah
A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah

Sandstone Canyon and Forest. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah.

This photograph was definitely not shot in “golden hour” light! Although it was afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky, and that sky was a somewhat unattractive washed out light blue color. In order to not allow that quality to take over the image, I composed this scene to completely exclude sky and also to minimize the inclusion of more distant features that would show the effect of the haze. I did include a bit of it at the upper right, since that serves to give the image some amount of depth.

The area is in the “high country” of Zion National Park along the Mt. Carmel highway. This road passes to the east across and then out of the park, climbing (through an exciting but, in some ways, unfortunate tunnel in the sandstone) out of the Virgin River area of the main Zion Canyon to pass through the dome-filled, river cut highlands. I shot toward the sun here, to be able to include the beautiful shaded cliff walls, and I tried to find a composition that would show the twisting course of the creek that winds down this canyon.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.